JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Nothingness143a person whom the questioner questions about being; this conception of the questionby making of it an intersubjective phenomenon, detaches it from the being to which itadheres and leaves it in the air as pure modality of dialogue. On the contrary; we mustconsider the question in dialogue to be only a particular species of the genus “question;”the being in question is not necessarily a thinking being. If my car breaks down, it is thecarburetor, the spark plugs, etc., that I question. If my watch stops, I can question thewatchmaker about the cause of the stopping, but it is the various mechanisms of thewatch that the watchmaker will in turn question. What I expect from the carburetor,what the watchmaker expects from the works of the watch, is not a judgment; it is adisclosure of being on the basis of which we can make a judgment. And if I expect adisclosure of being, I am prepared at the same time for the eventuality of a disclosureof a non-being. If I question the carburetor, it is because I consider it possible that“there is nothing there” in the carburetor. Thus my question by its nature envelops acertain pre-judicative comprehension of non-being; it is in itself a relation of beingwith non-being, on the basis of the original transcendence; that is, in a relation of beingwith being.Moreover if the proper nature of the question is obscured by the fact that questionsare frequently put by one man to other men, it should be pointed out here that thereare numerous non-judicative conducts which present this immediate comprehensionof non-being on the basis of being—in its original purity. If, for example, we considerdestruction, we must recognize that it is an activity which doubtless could utilizejudgment as an instrument but which can not be defined as uniquely or even primarilyjudicative. “Destruction” presents the same structure as “the question.” In a sense,certainly, man is the only being by whom a destruction can be accomplished. Ageological plication, a storm do not destroy—or at least they do not destroy directly;they merely modify the distribution of masses of beings. There is no less after thestorm than before. There is something else. Even this expression is improper, for toposit otherness there must be a witness who can retain the past in some manner andcompare it to the present in the form of no longer. In the absence of this witness, thereis being before as after the storm—that is all. If a cyclone can bring about the death ofcertain living beings, this death will be destruction only if it is experienced as such. Inorder for destruction to exist, there must be first a relation of man to being—i.e., atranscendence; and within the limits of this relation, it is necessary that man apprehendone being as destructible. This supposes a limiting cutting into being by a being,which, as we saw in connection with truth, is already a process of nihilation. The beingunder consideration is that and outside of that nothing. The gunner who has been